


December 20th

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 06:40:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13208127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons only meet by accident.  Her flight is delayed.  He nearly explodes a microwave in her dorm kitchen.  It may be the best accident of her life.





	December 20th

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whatlighttasteslike (waitingforeleven)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waitingforeleven/gifts).



> Written for whatlighttasteslike for the Fitzsimmons Network's Secret Santa exchange.

_December 20th, 2005_

Jemma Simmons was irate. And irate was not the way that one was supposed to be feeling over the holidays, intense tiffs with one's family over the proper way to make a sticky toffee pudding aside. There was supposed to be her mother's signature rich French hot chocolate and Jemma's patented present wrapping technique and the annual trip to go shopping in London and look at the lights and the Sunday roast at their favorite pub, followed by a vigorous walk through the hills to work off the effects of that Sunday roast. By now, she was supposed to be home, curled up by the fire with the cat and one of the many books she had been planning to buy at the London Review Bookshop. She was not supposed to be staring up at the ceiling of her dorm room, which was developing an alarming stain in the shape of a dragon, and politely cursing the name of the smarmy flight attendant who had informed her at the gate that her flight had been overbooked. And that the next available flight to London wouldn't be for another three days. (She had very nearly screamed in the airport, right next to the Starbucks manned by one very aggrieved-looking barista and the long line of travelers jockeying to get a prime boarding position before she thought better of it. She did wheel her suitcase very aggressively through the terminal, which made her feel a little better about the situation.)

Finals had been over for a full day and a half and nearly everyone else had fled the dorm. On the bright side, this was the first quiet Saturday night she had experienced since August. No drunken swimmers from down the hall, no one blasting music with their door open, no one complaining in the common room about the Econ exam. And no Daisy to pull her off her bed and talk her out of rewatching the Great British Baking Show for the fourth time. No Bobbi to make microwave popcorn with cinnamon sugar and suggest elaborate pranks to play on the second floor. No Elena to watch cheesy sci-fi movies with and tease about her slow-burn flirtation with the tall guy down the hall who had been looking Elena's way since the first day of move-in. 

Jemma rolled over and buried her face in her pillow. She reasoned that she was entirely entitled to five minutes of sulking. Then she would order Chinese food, raid Daisy's stash of fantasy books for something to read, and settle in for a nice, quiet night.

That was when the microwave exploded.

 

She emerged from her room to see smoke billowing out of the hall kitchen, accompanied by the faint smell of something charred beyond all recognition and a loud string of curses emanating from the smoke. What she didn't hear, however, was the smoke detector. Jemma frowned. They'd just had a fire drill a few weeks ago, when someone had left a tray of frozen French fries in the oven for nearly two hours, and the smoke detector should have—well, it would have if the batteries hadn't been lying on the counter, doing absolutely no one any good.

“You could have burned down the whole building, you know,” she said primly and peered through the smoke at the culprit. A boy, she thought, although not one she had ever seen in the dorm before.

“There's not even a fire,” he retorted. Before, she hadn't been able to make out much of anything besides the occasional curse but now he sounded distinctly Scottish.

“That's rather improbable. The laws of nature dictate that—”

“There was a small fire,” he admitted and turned to face her. The microwave-destroyer was skinny and awkward, all limbs that he hadn't quite grown into yet as he shoved one hand into the pocket of his jeans and swiped his curls out of his face with the other. “Miniscule, really. And it's out now.”

“Was it the microwave popcorn again?” When she looked closer, however, there didn't seem to be any food in the microwave at all. All she could see was bits of circuits and wires and things now on the outside of the microwave that she was fairly sure were supposed to be inside.

“I, er, wasn't cooking anything. It was an experiment. I didn't think anyone would be left in the building.”

“Well, I was,” she informed him dryly. “Thanks to the general incompetence of Laufeyson Airlines.”

“Oh, they're the worst. That's what I flew here, because it was cheaper than anything else, and I still have nightmares about the chicken they served. I mean, I still ate it but then I eat anything so—that's not quite the point, is it? I'm sorry about the microwave thing but you don't, ah, have to stay. No more explosions, I promise. I mean, of course you could stay if you want to, watch the smoke billow out and...” he trailed off, shifting from foot to foot. “I said that I was sorry earlier, right?”

“You did.”

They stood there for another minute in silence, the boy occasionally glancing over at the microwave as it continued to belch out smoke and Jemma made lists of reasons that she should go back to her room and enjoy some peace and quiet and ignored all of them.”

“Look, I was going to order Chinese food,” she finally blurted out. “And you get free delivery if your order's over twenty-five dollars and it doesn't look like the microwave's going to be capable of heating anything for at least another hour and—well, if you wanted to, we could split an order of food. Or something like that.”

“Really? That'd—I'd like that. I'm Fitz.” He stuck a hand out towards her, then seemed to think better of it and waved awkwardly at her.

“Nice to meet you, Fitz. I'm Jemma.”

 

Over the course of the next hour, she discovered several things about Fitz. His first name was Leopold, much to his embarrassment. He was capable of eating more dumplings than anyone else she had ever met. He liked sci-fi movies with terrible special effects and fantasy novels with elaborate world-building and the Clash. He laughed so loudly at her terrible puns that he nearly spilled soy sauce all over himself. And she wasn't quite sure why, but she thought they had a decent chance of becoming friends.

“Do you know what you're majoring in yet?” she asked and promptly winced. “Everyone asks that, don't they?”

“Nah, I don't mind,” he said with a shrug. “Physics and Education, probably. I'm thinking about becoming a science teacher. You?”

“I have no idea,” Jemma admitted. Normally, she said political science (she liked arguing with people) or biochemistry (she liked learning how everything worked) or if she was feeling like horrifying her parents, English literature. “But I am taking Professor Banner's Science and Society seminar next semester so I'm hoping that might help me decide.”

“Really? I thought he didn't normally let freshmen in. I had to solve all these equations for him and explain wave-particle duality to him using office supplies before he'd even agree to consider my application.” Fitz turned to her, piece of orange chicken poised halfway to his mouth, and looked at her speculatively. “What'd you have to do?”

“Send him an email. With all the research I'd done attached, including the history of science fiction for the last two centuries that I wrote as a project in sixth form. And I sent him a cutting of one of the experimental plants I'd bred.” Her parents had had to express it over from England. (The customs officials had had all sorts of questions.)

“So you're properly brilliant then,” Fitz said.

“A bit,” she mumbled, a flush stealing across her cheeks. She had a feeling that he was properly brilliant too. “Maybe we could study together sometime next semester? I've heard horror stories about his midterms and I've got a color-coded note-taking system and everything so...”

“Yeah,” he said, looking a little surprised and pleased about it. “Maybe we could.”

 

_December 20th, 2006_  
“I'm sure I failed it.” Jemma flopped down into her favorite squashy chair at the Playground Cafe, letting her messenger bag fall to the bag with a thump, and contemplated the prospect of drowning her sorrows with cake.

“Of course you didn't fail it. You probably got a 102% again.” Fitz said as he took a seat across from her. They'd been coming to the cafe since last January and they'd finally mastered the art of sweeping in at the exact right moment to snag the two overstuffed armchairs right by the wood-burning fireplace.

“It was 104.8%. Technically,” Jemma pointed out. It had been exactly three hours and fifty-seven minutes since they had completed their final for Dr. Banner's History of Science course and despite Fitz's best attempts to distract her with the promise of hot chocolate and speculation about the Doctor Who Christmas special, she had already drafted and discarded three emails to Dr. Banner about whether or not he had graded the exams yet. 

“He's probably already gotten at least five emails about the exam. Nearing beaker-smashing levels again. And I'm not getting Professor Odinson in again to talk him down,” Fitz added with a wince. “Or ask him to get his girlfriend to frighten Professor Banner into behaving.”

“So you're still scared of her?” Admittedly, Jemma had found her slightly intimidating the first time she had pulled up on her motorcycle at the end of one of the outdoor classes Professor Odinson insisted on conducting every semester but after Daisy had dragged her along to a self-defense class Val was teaching, her fear had transmuted to sheer awe.

“I have a healthy respect for anyone who's that good with a sword,” Fitz corrected. “And a healthy sense of self-preservation which requires me to remain at least five feet away from her at all times. Ten if she's got a sword with her.”

“Maybe if I failed the exam, I can fight a duel to restore my honor,” she said glumly. 

“Right then. I'm getting us hot chocolates,” Fitz said, standing up. “And for the next fifteen minutes, neither of us is going to utter the word exam. And there will be dire consequences if we do.”

“What kinds of consequences?”

“The kind with green juice. And slow internet connections.” He flashed her a smile and then headed over to the counter to place their orders, where he'd probably trip over his words and drop his change all over the place while never looking the barista in the eye. It was funny about Fitz, she thought. When she'd first met him, he'd been almost painfully awkward with her. (The microwave billowing smoke behind him probably hadn't helped.) He'd go from being easy with her, talking a million miles a minute, to half-finished sentences and turning the color of a tomato. She suspected that that happened whenever Daisy appeared and wasn't quite sure how she felt about it. She loved Daisy, of course, and she was quite fond of Fitz but she couldn't really imagine them together. Probably because Fitz hadn't managed to string more than five words together at a time in her presence for the last four months. 

Fitz returned balancing two hot chocolates and a massive slice of chocolate cake which appeared to have poinsettias frosted on top of it in rather lurid red and green icing. 

“I know they're poisonous,” he told her dryly as he arranged the mugs and plate on the table. “I thought it was festive anyway.”

“I wasn't going to say anything about them being poisonous,” she protested. Fitz looked like he didn't believe her. 

But he had brought her cake and that was truly the important thing here. Delicious cake, three layers of chocolate and thick buttercream frosting, rich enough to make her forget for a full five minutes about her performance on Professor Banner's exam. The hot chocolate, and the flotilla of mini marshmallows Fitz must have requested specially for it, accounted for another four. 

“I wish I could make cake like this,” she said, dragging her fork through the last bits of frosting. “Or any kind of cake at all. My entire family's declared me a disaster in the kitchen—last Christmas, I was actually forbidden from touching any of the biscuits until they had been iced and put away in the tins.”

“You make good sandwiches. That prosciutto thing, with pesto aioli? 'S your signature sandwich.” Fitz sighed, presumably remembering the prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich, complete with fresh pesto aioli, that she had crafted and brought over to his dorm room during midterms. One of his physics classes had been driving him mad and she'd seen the aioli recipe in one of Bobbi's cookbooks (Bobbi, of course, had taken French cooking classes since the age of ten) and she'd thought she'd do something nice for him. He had been much more delighted than a sandwich really warranted, jumping up to hug her and pronounce her his favorite person when she appeared at his door bearing a sturdy canvas tote with Ada Lovelace's face emblazoned on it and filled with food. She thought that anyone who brought him food would probably be Fitz's favorite person. Temporarily, at least. But it had still been nice to see him beam at her with delight. The way he had insisted on her staying to eat some of it had been nice too. 

“It's my only sandwich.”

“Then we'll make a cake. Or something simpler, like biscuits,” Fitz added at her look of alarm. “Together. My mum has an entire book of family recipes and I'm sure she's got something that's very hard to get wrong.”

 

Whether she was preparing samples for a microscope or compiling a color-coded binder of research, Jemma Simmons had always had remarkably steady hands. Except when it came to measuring out flour or cracking eggs or keeping more than a pinch of salt escaping into the batter. The counters of the kitchen in her suite were covered with a fine layer of sugar and flour, egg shells lay half cracked in the sink, the sprinkles had attempted to make a break for it, and the only cookie cutters Jemma and her suitemates had had on hand were shaped like Yoda, Luke Skywalker, various lightsabers, and Darth Vader's helmet.

“I think it's appropriate,” Fitz said as he carefully placed a Yoda on the cookie sheet. “I mean, the last movie came out last year and everything. No more Star Wars. These can be our mourning cookies.”

“Didn't you mourn last year?” Jemma plunged Darth Vader into the cookie dough, perhaps with a little too much enthusiasm.

“Too busy blowing up microwaves and being glared at for it by pretty girls. Right then,” Fitz said, leaving her absolutely no time to wonder if he had really just called her pretty. “You, Jemma Simmons, are a certifiable menace with the cookie cutters and I am taking them away from you.”

“You wouldn't dare do that to Darth,” Jemma said and then burst into giggles when Fitz brandished the lightsaber cookie cutter at her.

The cookies were delicious, even if the ones she'd made had turned out slightly misshapen. Buttery and light, with a hint of vanilla, and sturdy enough to hold up to frosting, the Halloween-themed sprinkles that had been hiding in the back of the kitchen cupboards, and the elaborate wrinkles Fitz was trying to pipe on Yoda's face. 

Fitz's facial expressions when she made him watch all of Love Actually with her were even better.

 

_December 20th, 2007_  
“It's so strange being warm at Christmas.” Jemma said to her computer screen. In the bottom left corner, Fitz's pixelated face nodded back at her. “The closest thing I've gotten to snow is the white sand at the beach. I tried to make hot cocoa the other day and it was too hot to even try to drink it.”

“Guess I shouldn't show you what I'm drinking then.” Fitz hefted up the TARDIS mug she'd gotten him for his last birthday, the mountain of marshmallows visible above the edge. “It snowed last week and everything. Hunter and I made a snow dragon in the yard outside his flat.”

“What did Bobbi think of that?” Jemma asked. Bobbi and Fitz's friend Hunter had been on and off since the fall of their sophomore year when they had met at a party, developed an intense rivalry over beer pong, teamed up to defeat all comers, nearly thrown their drinks at each other, and ended the night kissing passionately in a corner. 

“Oh, they're off again. He named the snow dragon after her and gave it extra pointy teeth. But I think they'll be on again by New Year's Eve,” Fitz said. “He'll go running across campus at midnight or something mad like that. Mack and I actually have a bet going about it. He says after New Year's, I say by eleven on New Year's Eve at the latest.”

“What does the loser have to do?” Jemma stretched out more fully on her bed, propping a pillow up behind her head, and readied herself to have a proper catch-up session. Bobbi and Elena sent her all the gossip, admittedly, but she liked hearing it from Fitz too. It was good to hear his voice, even when he rambled on for about thirty minutes about the machine for making toast he was building that looked and behaved exactly like a toaster but was somehow completely superior. (She rather wanted to try out the toast machine, honestly. The promise of both sides being evenly toasted was much too good to pass up.)

“Buy pizza for all of January,” Fitz said. “Do you want to help me win by using your wiles on Bobbi?”

“No use.” Jemma shook her head. “Bobbi is completely wile-proof.”

They talked for nearly two hours, before Daisy poked her head around the corner of Jemma's room and reminded her that they'd promised to meet up with people for dinner down by the beach in less than ten minutes.

“I thought we were going to be hermits,” Jemma said hopefully. That's what they'd both sworn last weekend when they'd woken up with pounding headaches and horrific hangovers. “With cats and everything.”

“We can be hermits next weekend. Lincoln says he's found a new place with Ferrero Rocher gelato that's incredible,” Daisy said, a slight flush spreading across her cheeks. She'd met Lincoln, a blond-haired, blue-eyed surfer who seemed to have stepped right out of a 60's beach party movie, a few weeks ago and had been dragging Jemma along on increasingly awkward group hang-outs ever since. Cute and willing to buy her drinks as Lincoln's friends were, none of them seemed particularly interested in talking about chemical compounds, Australian politics, 19th-century literature, or Doctor Who. 

“He found a new dessert place last week too. And the week before that. Do you think he's trying to woo you with ice cream?”

“Wooing makes it sound like we're living in a Jane Austen novel. We're...flirting,” Daisy decided. “Flirting very casually.”

“I don't think I know how to flirt casually. Or even how to flirt at all,” Jemma added with a frown. She had been on a few dates last year, mostly ones arranged by Daisy, and they'd all been perfectly fine and perfectly forgettable. She'd seen an exhibit of minor Impressionist paintings, watched an Oscar-bait movie set during World War II, and had dinner at a mediocre Italian restaurant. She couldn't help feeling that books had let her down when it came to dating. It wasn't as if she had expected fireworks but at the very least a sparkler would have been nice. 

“It's a work-in-progress,” Daisy said breezily. “Maybe you can practice on Fitz.”

“She is not practicing on me,” Fitz protested, his voice crackling through the speakers of Jemma's laptop. He'd finally stopped mumbling and stumbling through his sentences around Daisy about six months ago, when they'd had a Paranormal Activity marathon and stayed up all night convinced that someone was watching them. (It had largely been a positive development, except when they teamed up to mercilessly torment her.) “I still remember her trying to bat her eyes at Milton Cabbage-Head at that Presidents' Day party you made us all go to. It was downright terrifying—she looked like she had something massive stuck in her eyelashes and was trying to get it out.”

“His head didn't look like a cabbage,” Jemma said. “It just was unusually round. And he had a very interesting theory of cellular biology he was testing out.”

Fitz muttered something about it being a derivative theory anyway. Daisy just looked at her with utter despair. 

“Okay,” she declared. “You're borrowing one of my dresses for tonight. And you're not allowed to talk to any men who look like vegetables.”

 

“So do you miss Fitz a lot?” Daisy asked as they clattered down the stairs of their dorm fifteen minutes later. (Daisy had declared them fashionably late, with an emphasis on the fashionable.) She had talked Jemma into a short strappy blue sundress, a pair of wedges at least half an inch higher than usual, and a swipe of bold pink lipstick that Jemma thought she might actually like the look of. 

“A bit, I guess.” Jemma shrugged. “More than a bit sometimes. I mean, I miss everyone back at school. He's just the one I talk to the most.”

Daisy stopped in the middle of the steps and turned to look up at Jemma, shifting her weight back and forth from heel to heel. “But not too much, right?” she asked. “You're glad you're here?”

“Of course I am!” Jemma reached out to squeeze one of Daisy's hands in hers. “I get to spend an entire year somewhere amazing with my best friend. I've seen kangaroos and gone on my first proper road trip and I'm three-quarters of the way to being certified to scuba-dive. And you let me talk you into going to Hobbiton when we go to New Zealand.”

She hadn't thought of studying abroad, initially. All her biology classes had seemed to come along with three-hour labs and strict requirements that they be done on campus and her adviser for her English major had been quite adamant about the number of courses she needed to have completed before her senior year and about her chances of being chosen as editor-in-chief of the campus literary magazine if she wasn't there to campaign in person. But Daisy had come back from an information session about the school's year-long program in Australia with bright eyes and a million things she wanted to do, talking about temples in Thailand and beaches in Indonesia and rainforests in North Queensland and the list of cafes in Sydney that she already wanted to try. And Jemma had decided to stay on campus over the summer to take a few courses and wondered just how much she really wanted to spend her senior year poring over layouts and attacking confessional short stories with a red pen. She had wanted to do something that no one expected her to do, in the end. Her advisers had been mildly surprised, her friends more so, and her family had nearly fainted dead away when she'd told them about her plan. 

Fitz had just nodded and told her to go. “You're always talking about all the places you want to go,” he had told her. “You should start now. And try to smuggle back a monkey for me.”

(Monkeys were firmly off the table, of course, but she had been collecting an assortment of things she thought he might like, souvenirs and books and small, silly things that somehow reminded her of him.)

“I'm so, so glad I'm here,” she repeated and moved down a stair to loop her arm through Daisy's, nudging the other girl's shoulder with her own. “And I never would have gone if it weren't for you.”

“Of course you would have gone. Maybe not here but somewhere else. You always know what you want and then you go out and go it. You need to teach me how you do it. How to be together 101,” Daisy said wistfully.

“Apart from the fact that I managed to burn an entire pan of onions yesterday?”

“Things like burning onions don't count. You just know who you are. I'm still trying to figure things out,” Daisy admitted, tracing circles on the banister with her free hand. “I bounced around from foster home to foster home for most of my life, changing myself a little bit each time to see if it would stick. Never really did. But since college—this year, especially—I feel like things might be starting to take shape.”

“I think we're all still figuring things out a little,” Jemma said quietly. “And that I can't wait to see what we all turn into.”

_December 20th, 2008_  
It had originally been conceived as a small gathering. A few friends in Jemma and Daisy's apartment, some takeout Chinese food, and a ritual Christmas movie marathon. That had been before they started playing drinking games.

“Shouldnt've let Elena add all that rum to the punch,” Fitz mumbled from where he was planted face-down in Jemma and Daisy's couch. “Mack's face when he saw it 'swas pretty funny though.”

“That's a good situation,” Jemma said. “Having someone be terrified of and in love with you.”

“You want someone to be terrified of you, Simmons? Just show them the flashcards. I still have nightmares about those flashcards,” Fitz said mournfully.

“They weren't flashcards,” Jemma informed him and tried to draw herself up with dignity. This was somewhat impeded by the fact that the world was spinning around her. “They were advanced study aids. Inspired by flashcards, but ultimately transcending them.”

“Transcending. That's a good word. How can you use big words when you're drunk?”

“Practice. And diligence. Does that count as a big word?”

“I'll allow it.” Fitz waved one hand in the air, then managed to heave himself up and plant his head on Jemma's shoulder, making a small satisfied noise as he burrowed into her sweater. 

She would move him in a minute. She really would. But Fitz was warm and solid against her side and didn't object when she leaned into him a little too, tugging her closer with one arm and twisting one of her curls around his finger. Fitz was a surprisingly cuddly drunk—she'd first learned that at a party sophomore year, when he had curled up on a couch with her and let her use him as a human pillow all night. (He had played with her hair then, too, petting her like a cat as she drifted off to sleep. She had resisted the urge to purr.)

“I know what you're up to,” he told her. “Stealing all my body heat again. But I'll allow it. Because you're my favorite person at the moment. My favorite person most of the time, honestly.”

His eyes fluttered shut and he curled further into her shoulder before she could respond. Was Fitz her favorite person too? She did spend most of her time with him. He was one of the only people she'd ever met who could really keep up with her. And the only person who could make her laugh at a science pun that should have been absolutely asinine. And the only person who knew exactly when she wanted barbecue sauce and when she wanted mayo for her chips at their favorite burger place. And the only person she'd trust with her prized copy of Stardust. And he just was.

Eventually, she fell asleep curved around Fitz on the couch, his arm slung across her and her legs tangled with his. He'd grabbed her hand (or she had grabbed his) sometime during the night and when she finally woke up, bright morning light striping across the blanket someone had draped over them the night before, her fingers had nearly gone stiff in his. She kept on holding on anyway, until Fitz blinked his way awake and sleepily reached for her. Then he woke all the way up. And lunged backwards fast enough that he nearly fell off the couch. 

“Sorry,” he muttered. He was blushing now, in a way that she hadn't seen for ages, and staring very seriously at his lap. “I didn't mean to fall asleep on you—keep you from getting to bed and everything.”

“Don't worry about it. My room's been cold anyway—the drafts keep on getting in. It was actually much warmer sleeping out here with you. Not with you with you, of course. You make an excellent space heater,” she added quickly. “Top notch.”

“Exploiting me for my body heat again. Not to mention the fact that you stole all the blankets. Very sneaky, Jem,” Fitz said. “I have a plan of attack for next time though.”

“Next time?” She raised one eyebrow at him.

“Next time you decide to use me as a heat source.”

“What can I say? You're my favorite heat source.”

Fitz turned red at that. “I didn't, er, say anything stupid last night, did I?” he asked. “Nothing that I would regret if I could remember it.”

“Not at all,” Jemma reassured him. “Just some more of your time travel theories.”

It wasn't embarrassing, she reasoned. Not at all. In fact, it gave her the loveliest feeling in the vicinity of her heart.

 

“You and Fitz looked very cute together last night,” Elena said and gave Jemma an incredibly obvious wink before returning to attacking her pancakes. She, Bobbi, Daisy, and Jemma had all agreed to convene the morning after the party for breakfast at their favorite brunch place and while Daisy poked at her eggs and Bobbi nursed a cup of coffee and glared at anyone who talked too loudly, Elena was cheerfully demolishing an entire stack of blueberry pancakes. 

“It wasn't together. He fell asleep on me and I didn't want to move.” Jemma said around a bite of her toast. 

“Really?”

“Really. You just want someone to double-date with you and Mack at sc-fi movie marathons,” Jemma teased. “Take Bobbi and Hunter instead.”

“Hunter eats all the popcorn,” Elena shrugged. 

“She ninja'd it back from him last time,” Bobbi put in. “So fast that he didn't even see it coming.”

“It's my superpower. But you and Fitz are coming next time. They're showing Alien—maybe he can hold on to you during the scary parts,” Elena added, shooting Jemma a wicked smile.

She was going to object that there was no such thing as her and Fitz. But that wouldn't have been quite true. There was a her and Fitz of a sort, made of cartons of Chinese food and long nights of exam prep and endless episodes of Doctor Who. Of all the hours she'd spent talking to him on her laptop screen when she was abroad and the texts he sent her whenever he spotted something funny and the weight of his head on her shoulder that night. It just wasn't that kind of thing. She wasn't even sure what kind of thing it was.

(Besides a good one.)

_December 20th, 2009_  
“If you don't stand still, I'll never get it right.” Jemma brandished the bowtie at him and contemplated the odds of being able to glare Fitz into standing still.

“You're sure that you know how to do this?”

“Of course I am. I watched a representative sampling of tutorials on YouTube, including all the top ten results and some in the middle that looked helpful.”

“I don't see why I have to wear one anyway. You already got me into this shirt.” Fitz tugged awkwardly at the collar of said shirt, looking ready to jump out of his skin, and shot her an accusing look. She'd only told him that they were going shopping for a suit for his holiday party when they were halfway to the mall and then she'd bribed him with soft pretzels and frozen lemonade to keep him there. Jemma still maintained that it had been a necessary measure.

“Because it's that kind of party. The dress code said formal wear.” She propped her hands on her hips and stared right back at him. “Now stand still and let me try this again.”

“I look like a monkey in a suit,” Fitz said under his breath.

“But a monkey who's going to charm Professor Potts into letting you into her class off the wait list with your passion for teaching, extensive knowledge of pedagogical theory, and some well-timed physics jokes, right?” Jemma said. (There had been a series of detailed diagrams. And a flipchart. And five different colors of pen.)

“Right.” Fitz sighed and stood still to let her knot the bow tie around his neck. “You, ah, you look very pretty though. In red. And with your hair up like that.”

“Thank you.” Jemma smoothed her hands down the side of her dress, trying to avoid the urge to tug the hem down another inch. It had been a Daisy-fueled purchase, just a little dressier and shorter than anything she'd normally wear. But there had been a very specific dress code for the graduate holiday party and she had liked the way she looked in it and the idea of a holiday outfit that wasn't a sweater with snowmen on it.

“Is Will coming?”

“No, he canceled again. Something came up that he couldn't miss so...” Which she wasn't disappointed about. Not at all.

Fitz muttered something deeply uncomplimentary that she pretended not to hear.

“It's not like we're that serious, anyway. A few months of dating don't mean that he has to suffer through hours of small talk and cheap white wine. He was going to try to make it but--”Jemma shrugged. Bobbi and Elena had both predicted that Will wouldn't show up but she hadn't listened to them. 

“Well, he's a prize idiot then. You really do look pretty, Jem. The prettiest person there, I bet,” Fitz said, blue eyes steady on hers. He'd always had the bluest eyes. The color of a summer sky, or of the flowers that burst into brilliant color into the garden at home every spring. Even freshman year, when he'd dressed in faded t-shirts and let his curls flop all over the place, he'd had those eyes.

“We're not even at the party yet,” she finally managed. They'd be late if they didn't leave in a minute, in fact, and the elaborate diagrams depended on them arriving at the party exactly five minutes after Professor Potts got there. (Enough for her to take off her coat and get a first glass of wine, but not long enough for anyone to stake a claim to her for the evening.)

“You'll still be the prettiest person there.”

The party was a success, all things considered. The cheap white wine was apparently a better brand than the stuff they'd had last year. Jemma was able to get to the cheese plate before it all vanished. And Fitz's terrible physics jokes were a surprising hit with Professor Potts.

“I can't believe she liked the Schrodinger one,” Jemma told him. They'd agreed to stick to three quantum jokes or puns and although she'd initially been hesitant about the Schrodinger one, she had to admit that it had been a good note to finish on.

“The Schrodinger one is a classic. I suspect that you're just mourning the lack of good political science jokes.” Fitz smirked at her and deftly reached across the table to snag the last few strawberries for their snack plate. At the beginning of the semester, when Jemma had taken him along to her poli sci grad student mixer, they'd quickly learned that pooling their gathering skills for a communal snack place was the best strategy. Starving grad students could clean out a cheese tray in five seconds flat. 

“All the good ones just require extensive knowledge about our Founding Fathers. I have an excellent assortment of Alexander Hamilton jokes, you know.”

“He's the one on the ten-dollar bill, right?”

“Fitz! He's a Scot like you. I read this fascinating biography of him last month actually—it might very well be your Christmas present,” she teased. It wasn't—she'd had his Christmas presents picked out and ordered well over a month ago, when she'd spotted the signed Star Wars poster online and successfully outbid a very irate someone with the screen-name of NerfHerder77. She'd also gotten him a cookie cutter shaped like a lightsaber, for this year's batch of cookies.

“Then I'll probably like it. You always give the best presents. I still keep the—wait.” Fitz paused and turned, tilting his head towards the dance floor. “They're playing our song. We have to go.”

“Africa by Toto is not our song.”

“That's not what you said when we did drunken karaoke at Bobbi's last year.” Fitz started shimmying his shoulders, beckoning her towards the dance floor with one hand. “Come on.”

“But the food...” Jemma gestured towards their hard-won snack plate.

“Jemma,” he said solemnly. “There are some things that are more important than food.”

Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons were two people in possession of many talents. Dancing was not one of them. They bobbed their heads completely off the beat, they waved their arms about like flailing jellyfish, they made frankly absurd facial expressions as they mouthed the lyrics to the song, and Fitz nearly spun her into the dessert table. And it was a splendid time.

“You and Fitz seemed to be having more fun on the dance floor than the rest of the party combined,” an amused voice said from over her shoulder near the end of the night, as Jemma rooted through the coat racks for her and Fitz's jackets. She turned to find Professor Potts smiling at her, coat draped over one arm and still looking impossibly out together. 

“You two truly do make a lovely couple,” the other woman went on. “How long have you been together?”

“Oh, we're not together. Not like that. Not me and Fitz.” Jemma shook her head fiercely. “Strictly pla--platonic. Always have been.”

“You're sure about that?” Now Professor Potts looked faintly amused. 

“You know, people keep on asking me that. No idea why.” Jemma frowned. That fourth glass of white wine perhaps hadn't been the best idea. “But I'm absolutely sure. Just friends.”

And she was sure, she told herself. Even when Fitz grabbed her hand on the way home, telling her over and over again how glad he was she'd been there. And how Professor Potts had agreed to let him into her class. And how he'd never could have done it without her plans. (“Even if they were a bit mad, Jemma.”) And how brilliant she was.

“Jemma?” he said when she hugged him goodnight at his door. “I'm lucky to have you.”

“I'm lucky to have you too.”

_December 20th, 2010_  
“I think we should move in together,” Fitz announced. Or at least that's what Jemma thought he said. He was currently under the table trying to find the problem with her holiday lights so his voice was a little muffled.

“You want to live together?” she asked. Admittedly, Fitz was over at her apartment most of the time anyway for studying and Doctor Who and trying to teach her how to bake something that wasn't from a box. 

“We're both going to need new roommates after Elena and Mack get married in April. And 'm not living with just Hunter,” he explained. “Not after the Great Calzone Incident of September 2010. Mack never should have gone on that camping trip and left us alone.”

“To be fair, it was only for three days. He probably assumed you could only wreak so much havoc in three days. And that Bobbi and Hunter weren't due for another breakup for at least three weeks,” she said.

“A heartbroken man needs a calzone sometimes. The fire was completely accidental,” Fitz reminded her from under the table. “And it was only a small fire. Which, by the way, wouldn't happen if you were my roommate.”

“Really? You wouldn't try to make the toaster toast just a little bit faster or the doorbell play the sound of the TARDIS taking off whenever someone rings it?” She didn't mention the Tea Kettle Mishap of 2008 or the Rolling Pin Debacle of 2006. And they had both sworn a solemn oath to never again mention the Improvised Grill Catastrophe of July 2010.

“Nope. I'd be a model roommate. And you wouldn't even have to call me to come over to fix things,” Fitz said with the air of someone about to score a winning point. “I'd already be there, ready to unclog drains and speed up your internet and figure out why your Christmas lights won't turn on.”

“I think they just don't like me.”

“Impossible. Besides,” Fitz plugged something in and her lights sprang into brilliant color. “They're all fixed now.”

“Thank you!” She leaned down to hug him as he emerged from underneath the table and tried very hard not to notice how nice and firm his shoulders felt now. He'd started going to the gym with Mack this year, supposedly with the aim of being able to build a catapult with his Physics 1 students during his student teaching practicum, and it wasn't like she could just blindly ignore the fact. Or that he'd finally abandoned the ratty t-shirts and jeans for button-downs and ties that brought out his eyes in the most striking way. 

“So are we attempting the Fitz family cookie recipe again this year?” Fitz asked. 

“Of course we are! I bought a new cookie cutter for the occasion—the Millennium Falcon this time.” They'd built up a collection over the years, although she was still on the hunt for a Leia cookie cutter that would complement the Han cookie but also boldly stand on its own and suggest her potential to wield the Force. Fitz just argued that they should use royal icing to glue a mini lightsaber cookie into cookie Leia's hand. The idea had merit. 

“I even think this might be the year that I successfully frost a Death Star,” she added. 

“I'll believe it when I see it. Although the bright pink Death Star blobs two years ago did have their own kind of charm,” Fitz said, grinning at her.

In the end, she successfully frosted about half of a Death Star, which she thought should count. It was certainly an improvement over the Death Blobs. Fitz (and his perfectly frosted Chewbaccas) just had the unfair advantage of years of practice.

“I was thinking we could also make the chocolate things again this year? My mum really liked the ones I sent to her last Christmas. They're not as good as hers but...” Fitz trailed off. She'd met his mum once or twice over Skype, a woman with curly hair and a kind smile, and seen the emails that Fitz sent her nearly every day. It had only been the two of them when Fitz was growing up and now, with the cost of a flight to Scotland from Colorado sky-high, he only got to see her once a year, if he could find a cheap flight. Jemma's family drove her mad most of the time, certainly, particularly now that her younger sister had developed the unfortunate habit of interrogating her about her dating life, but she still went to see them every chance she got. She'd just been back in October and was already looking forward to a proper catch-up session and cup of tea with her mum when she flew back in a few days for the holidays.

“Of course we will. Anything for your mum. You should tell her that I love the jumper too.” Jemma reached over to lay her hand on top of Fitz's, lacing her fingers through his, and squeezed. “You must miss her a lot.”

“I do, yeah. But I think I may have found a flight cheap enough for spring break this year. It's Laufeyson Airlines again,” Fitz winced. 

“Laufeyson might not be so bad,” she said. “I'd never have met you if they hadn't bungled my flight so terribly freshman year.”

Fitz looked at her, massive smile spreading across his face, and she couldn't help thinking about his eyes again. And his face. And the sweet, steady way he had always looked at her.

Maybe that was why later, after three batches of cookies, a viewing of The Family Stone, and a truly massive order of pizza and garlic knots, her legs draped across his lap on the couch as they debated which Doctor Who Christmas special to watch first, and feeling ridiculously fond of Fitz, that she agreed to live with him. 

 

_December 20th, 2011_  
Living with Leo Fitz had been both a brilliant idea and a completely terrible one. Brilliant because, against all the odds, he was an excellent roommate. He never left dirty dishes in the sink, he leaped into action whenever anything showed the slightest sign of breaking, and he made the best macaroni and cheese that she had ever tasted. (Cavatelli pasta, three different kinds of cheese, and breadcrumbs on top.) Brilliant because he was her best friend and read fifteen different versions of her thesis with minimal complaining. Brilliant because she got to hear all his stories about the high school he was student teaching at and the look that lit up his face the day he got to teach a class on his own.

And terrible because, somewhere along the way, she had developed an incredibly inconvenient...crush. A slight infatuation. She blamed his improved wardrobe (and maybe the time she'd seen him come out of the shower shirtless). All the classic signs were there: the butterflies in her stomach, the random blushing spells, the rare moment when she found herself speechless around Fitz, the wave of warmth and excitment that radiated through her whenever she caught sight of him, the way she looked forward to coming back from her endless rounds of seminars and studying to see Fitz sitting at the kitchen table in his shirtsleeves grading papers with a mug of tea by his elbow. The fact that he had taken her to prom hadn't exactly helped matters.

It had been back at the end of May, when Fitz had volunteered to be a chaperone for the senior prom and talked Jemma into coming along with him. (“It's 80's themed and I can't be the only person there with big hair. And we can mete out justice to anyone who tries to spike the punch.) They had talked on the sidelines and ate too many strawberries from the chocolate fountain and she had met nearly all of Fitz's AP Physics students. They had danced, at the urging of one of the other chaperones when “Don't You Forget About Me” had come on, and it hadn't even been a slow dance. That was the unfair thing, she had thought later. They had both been making utter fools of themselves and she...she had felt her heart stutter a little just looking at him. 

However, it was nearly the end of the year and she'd already resolved to get over him for her New Year's Resolution. (Along with having another paper published, finally learning how to make a perfect pasta sauce from scratch, and securing an internship with the Stark Institute for the summer.) Unfortunately, the fluttering feeling in her stomach, which made a dramatic resurgence when the door swung open to reveal him with snow in his hair and two bags of takeout looped over his left arm, appeared to not agree with her. 

“I brought apology dumplings,” he said. 

“Did we lose another tea kettle to science?” she asked absently as she underlined another paragraph in her notes. Fitz had tinkered with two kettles, one very cheap saucepan, a lamp shaped like a dinosaur, and a coffee table so far this year. Some of his experiments, like the secret compartments he had added in to the coffee table, had been successful. Others, like the saucepan which they'd both agreed to dump in the trash in the dead of night, had not.

“Er, not quite. You remember how I've been substitute teaching for the district this semester in the hopes they'd give me Mr. Hall's job when he finally retired?” Fitz scrubbed at the back of his neck, bouncing a little from foot to foot. “I found out today that seniority rules in the district mean it's going to go to someone else. But I—I have been applying for some other jobs and today I actually got an offer--”

“Fitz, that's amazing!” Jemma beamed up at him, notes forgotten at her elbow. 

“But it's at an international school. In Paris.”

“In Paris. That's...that's still amazing.” Smile, she told herself. Smile and breathe. Ignore the feeling that a hand had just clamped itself around her throat and squeezed. “When would you start? If you took it?”

“January,” Fitz said, mouth twisted up. “Which is why the apology dumplings. I'd be leaving you without a roommate for the new year—I'd still pay my half of the rent, of course, until you found someone else. If I took it, that is.”

“Well, do you want it?” She vaguely remembered him telling her about applying for the position back in September. Fitz had been applying to job after job and this one had been just another in the endless stream of cover letters and sets of professional references. It had been for fun more than anything else, the idea of teaching in Paris.

“I could get fat on croissants and cheese,” he'd told her and laughed. “Though they'll probably take one look at my LinkedIn photo and decide I'm not good-looking enough to teach at their school.”

Jemma had silently disagreed.

“I think I might,” he admitted now. “It's a really amazing school and the pay is good—much better than I thought it'd be. I've never really been anywhere, you know, besides home and here.”

“It'd be an adventure.”

“It would. You'd go, wouldn't you?”

“Probably. I don't think it'll be easy all the time,” she said quietly. “Australia wasn't. And sometimes it was wonderful. Maybe this could be too.”

 

“I'll miss you,” he said later, sitting across from her on the couch, their knees close enough to nearly touch. “I mean, I'll miss everyone, of course. But I'll miss you most of all.”

“I'll miss you too. You're my best friend in the world, Fitz, and I can't—I can't imagine my life without you.” She sighed and dropped her head on his shoulder. She'd memorize as much as she possibly could now and save it up for a day when she was particularly missing him: the curve of his shoulder where her head fit the best, the rich sound of his laugh, the way his voice jumped an octave whenever he saw a spider, the light in his expression for everything from particularly good French toast to the first snow of the year to listening to Jemma talk about her research. Then she'd close her eyes and conjure him up until she could imagine he was sitting next to her, messy hair and crazy ideas and all. (The practical voice inside her head pointed out that this wasn't a good way to get over him. She told it to shut up.)

“You could come visit. Eat loads of crepes, explain all the art to me, ask the French what they think about their political system. And we'll talk all the time,” he promised. “Twice a week at least.”

“You'll get sick of me,” she protested halfheartedly. 

“Impossible,” Fitz said firmly.

 

The last time Jemma Simmons had cried—really, truly cried, tears thick in her throat like her heart was breaking—she had been seventeen and coming home from the worst party of her life, convinced that all the things she secretly thought were wrong with her with true. The time before that, she had been eleven and her parents had taken her aside one morning to tell her that her grandmother had died during the night. She didn't cry, as a rule. Tears were rarely an effective response. Yet, no matter how much she told herself that, she laid down on her bed the night that Fitz told her she was leaving and sobbed into her comforter like the world was ending.

“I'm crying,” she said to Daisy, phone pressed between her ear and the blankets. “I don't know why I'm crying but I can't stop.”

“Hey...hey,” Daisy said softly. “It's going to be okay. Just tell me what happened. It'll be okay, I swear.”

“Fitz is going to teach in Paris. For a year. I'm scared that he won't ever come back,” she confessed. It hadn't been true until she said it—or at least, she hadn't known that it was true—but now it was irrevocable. Fitz might fall in love with the city and the job and someone and never come back to her and her heart might just break if he did. No Fitz poking at the innards of a microwave or carrying overflowing mugs of hot chocolate or smiling at her through a screen or curling up with her on a couch or being the world's worst dancer with her. No Fitz at all.

“Of course he'll come back.”

“But what if he doesn't? What if he's okay without me and I'm not okay without him?” Her words fell over each other as she talked and everything was coming out far too quickly. She had to remember to breathe around the lump in her throat, that was all. Slow down and breathe long enough to remember how to stop crying. 

“Jemma,” Daisy said. “Have you tried telling him that you're in love with him?”

 

_December 20th, 2012_  
Jemma Anne Simmons wasn't quite sure what she was doing. Or if what she was doing had been a good idea in the first place. Either way, good idea or not, she was here in Paris after nearly twenty hours spent on planes and in airports, one French immigration official with a spectacular sneer, and a battle with the doors on the Metro and she was going to tell Leo Fitz that she loved him. 

It was very likely going to end in the kind of disaster she had spent most of her life avoiding. She didn't care. For the past twelve months, she had asked herself if she was really in love with Fitz, made lists of reasons why she wasn't, made lists of reasons why she was, torn up the lists, and repeated the process all over again. She had driven herself—and likely everyone else around her—mad. 

In the end, she had bought the plane ticket without really knowing if she was going to use it. An email announcing a sale on AirFrance had slipped into her inbox and she'd hit the buy button without even realizing she was doing it. Then it had just been there, taunting her from her email, staring up at her every time she opened it. Then she had packed a suitcase as a thought exercise more than anything else. Then on the morning of December 19th, she had found herself calling a cab to the Denver airport, walking through security, and getting on the plane. There had still been time to turn around during her layover at Heathrow and instead she had gone to the Waterstones and bought a mystery novel for the flight. There had even been time to turn around after she had gotten to De Gaulle, before she got on the RER and the Metro, before she got off the Metro and found Fitz's apartment building and instead she had stubbornly pulled her suitcase through the endless tiled corridors. There may even have been time to turn around after she rang Fitz's doorbell, if she sprinted down the street fast enough.

There was not time to turn around, however, when the door opened to reveal Fitz beaming in delight.

“Jemma,” he breathed. “You didn't tell me you were coming.”

“Happy almost-Christmas,” she said weakly. “I wasn't sure I was going to be able to come until—until I got on the plane actually.”

“I can't believe you're here.” Fitz shook his head and reached out to take her hands, tugging her into the foyer of his building as his smile got even wider. “I missed you so much, Jem. You have no idea.”

“I missed you too.” It would have been so easy to let him usher her inside, to go out for hot chocolate and croissants and talk for hours without talking about the thing she had originally meant to say. For a moment, she really did consider it. She and Fitz had always done quite well as friends. She could have left it at that and eventually, slowly, she would stop thinking of him that way. Probably. Only she found that she didn't want to. 

There was a chance that Fitz loved her too. A chance, in fact, that he was the love of her life. And she was damned if she was going to let that go.

“But there--there's something I need to tell you actually, Fitz. It's part of the reason why I came.” She took a deep breath. “I love you. And I don't know where we go from here or if you love me back. There's a lot of things I don't know, in fact. It's a strange feeling. But you're the best part of my life—you always have been—and I had to tell you. Just in case you loved me too.”

“Good then,” Fitz said. “Because I've been madly in love with you for the past seven years. Technically, I only realized it about four and a half years ago but I suspect I've been a little in love with you since--”

She was sure that whatever Fitz was going to say next would have been splendid. Kissing him was even better. He was the perfect height for her to lean in to him and his mouth fit perfectly against hers and his arms were the exact right length to wrap around her waist and her hands had always been meant to tangle in his hair and he had always been meant to look at her with that kind of wonder. 

“I can't believe...” Fitz trailed off, bringing up one hand to trace the lines of her face. 

“I can't either. But, to be sure, you should probably kiss me again.” 

Fitz laughed and pulled her in again, his lips soft and warm against hers. Their first kiss had felt like something destined, set in stone from the moment she had heard a microwave explode in their freshman dorm room. But their second kiss—gasping breaths and his mouth on her neck and her pressed as close as she could possibly get to him and the smile she could sense as she kissed him some more—felt like something they had chosen. Something that she'd choose over and over again if she had the chance. 

Jemma Anne Simmons still wasn't quite sure what she was doing. Or what would happen next or what she and Leo Fitz were going to be. But she was sure that it was going to be good.


End file.
